We have said that this deed was executed calmly. There is a calm of the passions,
when most excited, when most intense, just as there is in the tempest, when
all its powers are most awfully arrayed for action. The temperament of Julian
was of a sort that, after the first terrible outbreak, appears singularly subdued even
in its fiercest rages. It is as if the ordinary exercise of thought and judgement, overthrown
by one deep convulsion, no longer provoke, by their unadvised suggestions,
any farther struggle with that frenzy which they have already felt so forcibly.
Shrinking from the conflict, they leave the torrent unopposed, and though it still
rushes headlong with irresistible power, yet its waters, meeting with no obstruction,
no opposition, move forward smoothly and with even surface, to the bosom of the
mighty deep. Of their volume, of their depth, of the vast troops of terrible forms
that glide below, ravenous for prey, the eye sees nothing on the seemingly placid
and innocent waves above. There is nothing more awful in the moral world than
those mighty passions which thus hurry forward, wearing a surface so deceitful.

Yet Julian was not calm. There was nothing placid in his soul. There, all was
confusion and uproar—a conflict which he could not govern—frenzies by which he
was mastered—which his thoughts no longer availed him to oppose. It was only
to the eye that he was thus subdued. That he felt something of the awful deed
which he had just done, may be inferred from the brief sentences which fell from
his lips as he proceeded—musings which seemed in some degree designed to lessen
the enormity of the offence, by showing how valueless was the previous boon of
life of which his sudden stroke had deprived his companion. The stern philosophy
which he thus expressed, was found in that fanatic mood which has, in every age,
provoked to like performances some of the most remarkable of men.

“Incapable of vengeance, for what should he have lived? If there be no natural
passion to be fed—if there be no country to retrieve, no father to protect, no wife
to love, no pride to feel, and no revenge to take—there is death only. He could
not have lived to hope—he might to shame. It is better thus. Enough, that he
stands not in my path—obstructs me not—thwarts not, with his feminine fears, the
great work to which, this hour—hear me, ye Arab dead, whom I have stricken!—I
dedicate all that is left me of strength, or soul, or passion. Spain! Spain! thou
hast looked on the dishonor of my child, and shalt share in the doom to which I
devote the tyrant thou hast served. Thou heardst her cries! thou sawest her agonies!
thou knowest her shame! Thou shalt know the vengeance of her sire!
Come to me, dark spirits of the Moslem and of night. Mohammed!—Lucifer! I
summon ye, here upon the field, from which a thousand gloomy ghosts are rising
up in your honor—I summon ye to the retribution craved by mine! Take from
me these feebler affections which would unman me. Take from me all human
thoughts of country, friends, affections—make me what ye would have me—that,
working in your cause, I may triumph in my own!”

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An awfu, majesty—the gloomy pride of a satanic spirit—glared from the countenance,
and declared itself in the attitude and action of Julian, as thus, in sentences
more broken than in our arrangement of them, he devoted himself to the stern
deities of hate and vengeance. His form seemed to dilate as if in communion with
the invisible world which he thus challenged to the audience. His hand was
stretched in threatening to the opposite shores of Spain. His voice was deep and
portentous. Terrible, indeed, was the shock which he had received. The mind
of power was deranged—the nice adjustment of its capacities was partially lost, but
there was still a strange and awful harmony in its action, in obedience to the new
and absorbing motive which his spirit had received. It seemed as if the new deities
which he invoked had accorded him a nature, in lieu of that nobler one which he
had lost, by which his way was shown him—dark and marked by madness as it
was—inflexibly to one consistent end and undeviating purpose. It is thus that the
intense aim of the monomaniac accords to his moods the semblance of a method,
which is wanting to all its purposes but one. The mind of Julian could now
grasp but a single object. There was no need for reason—her faculties were
suspended. Even as he waved his hands in threatening—even as he invoked his
deities of vengeance—a gloomy form, a dusky shadow, with long trailing garments,
swept between him and the red orb, on which his eye was unconsciously cast. A
shrill gust passed over the bloody plain, and Julian felt that his prayer was
answered. The dark and mighty spirits which he had summoned had yielded to
his wish. His invocation was heard, his vow sanctioned—his foot was yet to be
placed upon the neck of his prostrate country.

He had now no relentings. He hurried toward the tents of the Arab. There
they lay, a thousand dusky shapes, with their crescent-summits gently gleaming
in the starlight. The horse-tails were waving before each. The great banner of
the prophet rose up conspicuous in the centre, just beside the tent of Muza. On
its top shone forth a golden emblem of the moon in the first quarter, which, to the
eye of the faithful, might naturally seem to ray out with a brightness of its own.
Wild and beautiful was the scene, silent and softly peaceful, of that strange and
wondrous picture. The camp of the Moslem lay as still, in the serene starlight,
as the crowding dead, among whose insensible forms the feet of Julian had passed.
But he beheld as little of the splendid beauty of the one scene, as he had done of
the terrible features of the other. The eye of his soul was turned within, and there
were objects of more startling character there, for his contemplation, than any in
the external picture. The hell of a heaven-abandoned heart, conscious of wrong—
or it may be unconscious—but going aside from all the social gods which it has
been taught to follow and obey, is too much crowded with its own horrors to find
any in the external world.

A light from the tent of Muza streamed timidly forth and lay in a long direct
line, stretching to the very foot of the great standard of the prophet. At the foot
of this standard, Julian of Consuegra came suddenly to a pause. He lingered for
a moment. Here his guardian genius made its last stand. Virtue opposed herself,
however faintly and feebly, to the haughty strength of her assailant. But her
voice had sunk into a whisper. It was not entirely unheard—but it was unheeded.
The demon of vengeance mocked her supplications. Hate answered, with terrible
strength of utterance, to all the suggestions of love. The dark spirits were about
to triumph. One involuntary shudder passed over the form of the apostate, marking
the brief conflict between the contending genii. The ties of country were given
to the winds. The remembrances of youth—the triumphs of manhood—the honors
of a family name—the trophies of reputation—the regard of friends—the tributes

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of the good and great—all availed nothing in that final struggle. With clenched
hands, thrice shaken toward the shores of Spain, Julian advanced firmly to the
tent of the Moslem. The die was cast. His form covered the light which guided
his footsteps to the entrance. He did not suffer himself to linger, but, with a will
becoming more and more obdurate with every moment of delay, he strode with deliberate
resolve, and growing erectness, within the concealing folds of the canvas,
which, in the same moment was to shut him out from his country and his God.